COSTA MESA : 75 Attend Services for Teen-Ager Shot to Death

About 75 people, many of them weeping teen-agers, attended rosary services Sunday night for David Gallardo, a 15-year-old youth who was shot to death last week.

The traditional Roman Catholic service was conducted in the chapel of Harbor Lawn-Mount Olive Mortuary and Memorial Park in Costa Mesa.

Before saying the rosary, friends, relatives and Estancia High School classmates paid their respects at the coffin. Some of the young mourners were so overcome with grief that they had to leave the chapel; clusters of young people were weeping and trying to console each other in the chapel foyer.

Gallardo, a sophomore at Estancia High, was fatally shot in the head early Wednesday morning, allegedly by a man whom authorities have declined to identify. The shooting came as Gallardo and a friend, Thomas Ramirez, 16, allegedly were fleeing after trying to steal car parts from a Porsche parked at Holtz VW Repair in the 700 block of West 20th Street at 12:06 a.m. Wednesday. Neither teen-ager was armed, according to police.

Police have said only that David Gallardo was shot by a man in his 30s as he and Ramirez were trying to drive away from the repair shop. Russ Williams, the shop’s manager, has said that the man who fired the round from a shotgun did so accidentally. He also said the man is a friend of his who had lived on the repair shop premises.

Thomas Ramirez, who was not wounded in the shooting and was detained by the unidentified man, has been charged with attempted theft. The district attorney’s office is expected to announce this week whether it will seek prosecution of the man who allegedly fired the fatal shot.

The funeral for Gallardo will be at noon today at St. John the Baptist Church, at 1015 W. Baker St. Interment will follow at Harbor Lawn-Mount Olive Mortuary and Memorial Park.